


of stars and strangers

by orphan_account



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25263319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It was a starry blue night when Callista Curnow met Billie Lurk.
Relationships: Callista Curnow/Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	of stars and strangers

It was a starry blue night when Callista Curnow met Billie Lurk.

Or, at least, Callista presumed it was starry, behind the screen of Dunwall’s general smog, and that the deep blue in the sky wasn’t just something secreted from the whale oil processing plants. She didn’t know. Uncle Geoff had told her that the sky was blue in Serkonos, too, much bluer than it ever was here, but she had never been there and never seen it for herself.

She liked Dunwall’s sort-of-blue skies well enough, anyway, and she went up on the rooftop most nights to look at the stars for an hour or two. She had always done this, since Uncle Geoff took her in when she was very little. There had not been a rooftop where she had lived with her parents. Not one she could access.

All that time ago, when she’d been very little and so very alone, the stars had comforted her, and listened to her dream aloud about becoming a whaler.

Now this day Callista was twenty-three but she felt very much older than that, and she did not speak to the stars anymore but she thought they might have heard her anyway. Because on that night she wished someone was there to look at the stars with her. And the stars brought her Billie Lurk, even if admittedly not quite in the way one might have expected.

(In retrospect, it might just have been luck, because as Callista learned quickly, Billie was not the type to be pushed around by anyone. The stars wouldn’t have stood a chance.)

It happened like this:

“Fuck,” someone said, with a voice that might have been lovely if it wasn’t raspy as though spoken through a filter, and then they fell off of the rooftop next door several meters down to the Curnows’ rooftop. The someone landed with a heavy sound and a crack, and more swearing followed.

Callista jerked upright. _What in the Void,_ she might have said, except that her throat was closing from fright and suddenly she had no voice at all.

“Fuck,” was repeated, sounding decidedly more dazed this time.

Callista couldn’t see them very well in the dark, but the vaguely human-shaped shadow in front of Callista appeared to be nearly motionless, jerking or twitching a little every few moments as if to get up, but was unable to.

Callista took a few deep breaths, discovered that no, she was not panicking any less, and she needed to say something anyway. “Are you okay?” she blurted out, and winced when it came out practically a squeak.

“I’m fine,” they said testily. “Scram.”

“You’re not fine,” Callista said, trying to keep her voice steady and partially succeeding. It only shook a little bit. “You just fell off of a roof.”

“Onto another roof,” they said, as if she needed it pointed out. “Better than the ground. I’ve fallen all the way to the ground before, too, and let me tell you, this is nicer. Much nicer. I didn’t even break anything, or not anything that wasn’t already broken.” There was a brief pause, then, “I’m not talking right. I don’t normally talk like this. I think I may have a concussion, and Thomas is going to kill me.”

Callista found herself starting to calm. This person, whatever in the world they were doing on the rooftops (and apparently falling _off_ of them on a regular basis) didn’t seem very dangerous, and they were clearly injured. “Right, enough of that,” she said. “Nobody’s going to kill you, and I’m going to find you a doctor.”

“No!” the person snapped, so harshly that Callista jumped a little and immediately revised her opinion of how dangerous this person was. “No doctor.”

“I—I’ll take care of you then,” Callista said. “No doctor, I promise.”

For a moment all she could hear was the person breathing. It sounded odd, through whatever filtering contraption it was that they were wearing. It wasn’t unpleasant to hear. Just odd.

“Fine,” they said eventually, so quietly that Callista almost missed it.

She didn’t. She was used to dealing with shy children and tired adults and she had never been a loud-spoken person herself. “Alright,” she said determinedly. “Let’s get you inside, and take a look at your head.”

“I don’t think I do have a concussion, actually,” they mumbled. “I’ve had a concussion before. This isn’t as bad, but it’s still—something.”

Callista bent down beside them and tried to slip an arm under their back. She felt smooth leather beneath her hands. “Shift up a little,” she said. “I’m not very strong. I can’t just pick you up.”

“I’m strong. I could probably pick _you_ up.”

Callista bit back a smile. “Probably. Maybe another time.” Outsider’s eyes, why had she just said that? “Come on, really though. I need you to help me out here. Just a little—yes, that’s it, thank you.” It was an awkward position, crouching down to get an arm around their shoulders, but she was able to help them get to sitting upright, at least. “Window’s just over there. Think you can stand?”

“Of course I can stand,” they said, sounding mildly insulted, and proved it by shoving themselves up partway and swaying so hard that they nearly tipped off the roof. Callista screeched, grabbed them by the arm and yanked them back.

“Right,” she said breathlessly, when her heart was beating semi-regularly again. “No standing.”

They did manage to make their way inside eventually, via crawling the distance, then Callista went in first and helped her new sort-of-acquaintance down (sure, she accidentally dropped them the last foot or two, but at least they didn’t hit their head again) and then they were, finally, in the warmth and the light and Callista was able to take a good look at the person she’d just brought into her home.

Whereupon she realized that they were wearing a long red coat and a whaling mask and looked exactly like the person on the wanted posters all over Dunwall, with an offer of three thousand coins for whoever turned them in.

Callista quietly freaked out for a few moments, then thought about it.

She wasn’t in the habit of lying to herself, and yes. She admittedly considered the offer for half a second. She and Uncle Geoff could really use the money.

But she also wasn’t in the habit of leaving injured people to the dogs, and frankly she wasn’t very fond of the City Watch except for her uncle. So when that half a second had passed, Callista shrugged and slung an arm around Billie Lurk’s waist, and together they stumbled into the guest bedroom.

“Do you have any other injuries?” she asked, while she searched for the clasps on Billie’s whaling mask.

“My ribs,” Billie said. “Bruised, maybe cracked, but not broken. Still painful, though. That’s why I fell. But I can deal with them myself when I get back to base.” The words were tight and controlled, a stark difference to her earlier tones. Her disorientation was probably starting to fade.

“Base,” Callista said carefully. She found one clasp, and undid it slowly. She marveled a little at the well-oiled leather. Clearly taken good care of. “Where’s base at?”

Billie stiffened and didn’t answer. Callista took the hint and went quiet as she undid the other clasps.

She wasn’t sure what she expected when she finally pulled the mask away, but it certainly wasn’t a woman who was… rather stunning, frankly. Callista blushed on principle. Not at all the rough, harsh assassin that she’d expected.

“Are you just going to stare at me or…?” Billie asked, raising an eyebrow. The corner of her mouth tilted up, wry.

Callista groaned inwardly. “No. No, of course not. Where did you hit your head?”

“Right…. here,” Billie said, taking Callista’s hand and resting it on a spot on the back of her head. Callista suppressed a shiver, and carefully prodded around the area, noting when Billie did or didn’t wince.

“There’s some blood,” she said. “Head wounds tend to bleed a lot regardless, though. I don’t think it’s too bad.”

Billie relaxed slightly. “Good.”

“Do I want to know what you were doing falling onto my roof in the first place?” Callista asked, turning away to dig around in a cabinet for bandages and some of the spare elixir she kept for disinfecting cuts.

“No,” Billie said flatly. “You don’t.”

Callista had never been one to shy away from things she might not want to know. “Tell me anyway, Billie,” she said.

Billie didn’t seem surprised that Callista had guessed her name, and, for reasons unknown to anyone but herself, she answered. “Alright,” she said. “Alright.”

There had been a target, she said. It should have been simple. In and out, clean, quick, slit the guy’s throat and grab his will. But the target had known she was coming, somehow. Shot at her—missed, but he’d startled her and she’d stumbled into a tripwire, and been hit with some kind of blunt, heavy bolt right in the ribs. She hadn’t had many options in the situation and so ran like hell—but somebody had followed her. Somebody with the same kind of training as her, able to keep up with her across half of Dunwall. She’d lost them somewhere in the Distillery District.

One of the Whalers must have betrayed her. Billie closed her eyes when she said that; and Callista tried to be gentler with the bandages, then, but she didn’t think the pain was what was bothering Billie. At least not physical pain.

“It was a low-profile job, and almost nobody knew about it,” Billie muttered, enunciating the words clear and cold like glass, and looking like she wanted to snatch them out of the air and shatter them. “Nobody except Daud and Thomas and Coleman. Maybe—I’m not sure, but Misha might have known, too.”

“So one of them betrayed you.”

Billie gritted her teeth and looked away. “Yeah. One of them.”

“Do you know who?” Callista asked. She didn’t know why she was remaining so calm about all of this, but after she got over the initial shock of what was happening, this all felt—pretty normal. Much stranger things had happened to Callista in her lifetime, and much worse. She could handle discussing “work” with an injured assassin.

“Well, it wasn’t Daud, obviously. And—Thomas wouldn’t.” Billie startled suddenly. “Shit. It wasn’t Misha or Coleman either—they had the Crawford job tonight. It’s not any of the gang. Someone else is following me. This isn’t the first job recently when something like this has happened, either.”

Callista took a deep breath and stepped back, casting a last glance over the bandages. Good enough. “I’m guessing you need to go find that someone.”

“Yes,” Billie said, and when she stood, her face was very close to Callista’s. Neither of them stepped away.

Billie moved first. She leaned around, just slightly, and pressed her lips to Callista’s cheek. The touch left a tingle on Callista’s skin. “Thank you,” Billie said. “You didn’t have to invite me in your home and make sure I was alright.” Her hand came up, and she must have discarded her gloves at some point because it was bare, warm skin that Callista felt when Billie cupped her cheek. “That was… kind of you. There aren’t many people like you in Dunwall.”

Callista smiled. Her heart was pounding. “More than you’d think, but I guess you don’t run into a lot of them in your line of work.”

That actually surprised a laugh out of Billie. It wasn’t bubbly, or musical, but it was rough and genuine and Callista loved the sound. “No,” Billie huffed, smiling ruefully. “No, I don’t, you’re right about that.”

She turned to gather her mask and gloves, then headed for the door – presumably to return from where she came, through the window – but halted after a moment. “You never told me your name.”

“Callista.”

“I’m glad I met you, Callista,” Billie said. She said it very quietly, like it wasn’t the sort of sentiment she was used to expressing.

“I’m glad, too,” Callista said. “You should come back sometime. Tell me if you catch the person following you.”

Billie smiled again. “Sometime. Maybe.”

And then she did leave, and Callista stood there for a moment, trying to fathom what had just happened. She’d met an assassin. And she’d liked her. A lot.

“I hope you do come back,” Callista murmured to the empty room, and found that she was, indeed, hopeful. For the first time since this damned plague had begun, Callista was looking forward to something aside from their regular batches of elixir rations. She had things that needed to be done, in the meantime, but right now… she didn’t want to break the moment by moving. It felt like she could still feel Billie’s presence lingering in this room.

She shook herself. No time for foolishness. It was long past midnight; she still had to prepare lesson plans for the morning, because despite the occasionally extraordinary events such as this in her life, she was still just a simple governess with bills to be paid, and she could not spend her hours dreaming about a beautiful woman.

There was a letter on the kitchen table that she needed to answer, too. From a man by the name of Admiral Farley Havelock.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! :)


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